Stranger Than Fiction: Jarome Iginla Becomes a Boston Bruin

By Emma Harger

You are teammates now. Michael Ivins – USA TODAY Sports

Second chances really do exist, as proven by the fact that Jarome Iginla has now become part of the Boston Bruins.

This is not an extremely late April Fool’s Day joke. This is not going to be retracted in a late hour when another team takes him instead. This is real, this is the truth and it has been confirmed by a press release from the team.

Iginla’s deal may look like a big wallop on the surface–one year, $6 million–but here’s the thing: much of it is incentive bonuses. Only $1.8 million is the actual salary. An additional $3.7 million is in games-played bonuses and another $500,000 is in goal-scoring and team playoff performance. Thus, the possible $6 million total.

Iginal barely needs explanation of his career deeds done so far, but here are a few: two 50-goal seasons, two Rocket Richard trophies, an Art Ross trophy, 30+ goals in 11 consecutive seasons (before 2012-13), perfect attendance for the past five seasons, an extremely fun-to-look-at full name and so on. There’s no doubt in my mind that he will be on the top line, even though the Bruins were able to hold him pointless during the Eastern Conference Final.

This acquisition has created some complex feelings among many Bruins fans: confusion, conflict, anger and so on. That’s understandable. What happened just a few months ago was a strange situation indeed and it’s okay to have conflicting feelings about this. Perhaps eventually seeing Iginla play will win over some hearts and minds. Besides, with this deal, the Bruins got to keep the players who were originally going to be bargaining chips for getting Iginla via trade–Matt Bartkowski and Alex Khokhlachev, you get to stay!

In signing Iginla, the Bruins also announced that they nabbed some more pieces of the puzzle, including Providence fan favorite Bobby Robbins, who has an excellent Twitter feed, by the way. Chad Johnson, a goalie with a heap of AHL experience (I presume a new part of Providence’s tandem), got a one-year, one-way deal. Nick Johnson, a forward who is unrelated to Chad, does come from the same team, the Phoenix Coyotes. Mike Moore is the sole defenseman of this depth signing group. All but goalie Johnson are on two-way deals.

Remember earlier when I said not to worry because Chiarelli knows what he’s doing and might have had something up his sleeve? There you have it. Now he has some contract extensions to work on–that’s next on the agenda.